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Comment by Zelphyr | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve heard that grocery stores sell milk for less than they buy it for just to get you into the store, because they know you will buy other things.

I wonder if this is why they always put it in the back of the store? That way you have to walk through a vast array of higher margin things that you might suddenly decide you need on the way to and from picking up a gallon of milk.

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There's a few reasons. Oftentimes the milk cooker is refilled/restocked from a walk-in cooler behind it accessible only to employees, and it would obviously be difficult to put this anywhere other than the back wall. I suspect it's also easier to run the utilities for freezers and coolers around the perimeter of the store and then down a few aisles.

Probably not. There's a more practical reason in most big stores: the shelves where the dairy items are displayed are the front wall of a refrigerated room. This way the product can be placed directly from behind, and never taken out of the cold.

And in a store where the cases are stocked from the front, they need to be up against some wall so that they have access to electrical outlets (and maybe drainage for the compressors, depending on the nature of the case).

That is a factor. As others have pointed out, having a fridge at the back is a useful logistic factor.

~20 year ago I heard about stores putting milk up front for those who just wanted milk quick. If you looked though the milk in front was more expensive (different bar code) than the milk in back. This hints that getting people to the back is part of the reason. I haven't seen milk near the front of a grocery store in a long time though (I don't know why).

Yes. Same deal with Eggs, and why they have all the candy at the registers. And why they rearrange the store occasionally.

OMG that rearranging of the store makes me so angry. Just when I get a system down for getting in, getting what I need to get off my list, and getting out and they throw that monkey wrench in.

That and using stacks of items as road blocks in the aisles to slow me down in front of higher-margin items. They don't need roadblocks with my pokey-shopping neighbors who stand in the middle of the aisle and stare at the two boxes of white-label pasta in each hand, attempting to calculate in their heads which one is the cheapest per noodle (my dad and grandmother being chief offenders here) all the while completely oblivious to my nasty glares because I just want to get past them so I can get to the sauce and move on.

I used to be weekend staff at a clothing store that changed layouts every week. Every weekend, I'd have to relearn where everything was.

Candy is by the registers because candy companies know impulse buys at the registers are a big factor in sales and they pay (indirectly via profit margin?) for that place.

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